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See, the thing is, a lot of people coming up with ships for their show make them the best, superduperawesomemegacoolasskickingdeathdealingult rafast ship out there, because of coolness reasons. But it just doesn't make sense.

i'd think by the time this ship was commissioned they would be like this, i have a basic idea of what i would like it to look like, normal saucer part but with that ring thing in the middle like on an early Vulcan vessel acting as the impulse drive, 5 warp nacelles. 2 with side but the 5th in the middle, its a basic design

i'd think by the time this ship was commissioned they would be like this

No matter what time we are speaking of, no ship (be it ocean vessel or starship) has ever been designed to be good at EVERYTHING. Because it's not possible. You can't have a powerfull battleship that's also some sort of cruiseship.

ok so i shall scrap some of the stuff, it shall be a cardinal class battleship, i shall stick with having the weapons array including a phase cannon, the huge shuttle bay, the best armoury, the interspecies court room, a run of the mill canteen kind of place, the state of the art medical facilities stay, add state of the art science facilities too as they are practical things to have on a battleship, but i think having some leisure facilities would be sufficient so a few holosuites would suffice and i would think some new version of the Vulcan ring thing for the cardinal class could be made and created as its impulse engines

always room for a joke, but yeah i have another added idea, how i decided about the Vulcan ring thing for the impulse drive, well that section is where the main bridge is, that can separate and be used as a single craft if needed, same with the other section

Some tips:
1. Don't use words like "best" and "greatest". They make the ship sound fanboi-ish and are not good story telling.
2. Five warp nacelles??? no. just no. How often in the shows/movies have we seen more than two? how often in the novels have we seen more than 3?
3. This is for some stories you're writing, right? Then the ship only needs to be capable of what you need to happen in the stories. And just barely that. Look at it this way, what's the better story, an old ship encounters something it can barely handle only through the ingenuity of the crew, or a Huge, overpowered ship encounters something and deals with it in seconds? There's a reason the Enterprise -D was breaking down so much -to add tension.

Here's an idea. Post a thread in the fan fiction forum (listed just above fan art on the main page here) asking for help with your ship. The guys in there are great at helping people develop background material for stories.

__________________Baby, you and me were never meant to be, just maybe think of me once in a while...

Damn, thats a big gun.Getting back to the original spec- and I'd love to be enlightened on this one- I would have thought that a TNG era (lets say) Fed diplomatic/ first contact vessel would have had to have been fairly small in size so as not to scare the natives on their detection systems. I figure said ship would sacrifice armaments ('We come in peace'!) for comms and scanning equipment, but also being capable of getting the hell out fast if the natives want to be left alone or start shooting. Was that what the Oberth class was intended for, or was there a canon class of ship dedicated for that purpose?